Epidemiology and Population Health

Earlier this summer, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights released a report on Canada’s approach to criminalizing those who don’t disclose that they’re living with HIV to sexual partners.

Good morning everyone. My name is Kate Salters and I am a PhD-trained
Infectious Disease Epidemiologist working as a Research Scientist at the
BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (the BC-CfE) and a faculty member
at Simon Fraser University within the Faculty of Health Sciences. Thank
you for inviting me to speak with you today.

On April 24th, Federal Health Minister Hon. Ginette Petitpas Taylor visited the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS (BC-CfE) to speak to Executive Director & Physician-in-Chief Dr. Julio Montaner about BC’s leadership in HIV, hepatitis C (HCV) and opioid use disorder (OUD). The BC-CfE has long played an essential role in the testing, diagnosis, treatment and ongoing monitoring of people living with HIV in British Columbia, and is transferring that knowledge to HCV and OUD.

We both grew up in Vancouver and we’d always joke about cities with 24-hour traffic reports, overcrowding, and overpriced housing. Over the last few years we realized the joke was on us and moved to smaller communities.

HIV-negative men who have sex with men (MSM) living in Vancouver, Canada are redefining ways to negotiate sexual safety and risk, according to qualitative research recently published by Dr Benjamin Klassen and colleagues in BMC Public Health. Condoms are no longer seen as the only means of preventing HIV infection.